E4S Awards - Cabot Corp.
1 Oct 2025
Project: Evolve sustainable solutions
Evolve is Cabot’s technology platform is designed to deliver reinforcing carbons in three sustainability categories: Recovered carbon black from end-of-life tires; reinforcing carbons made from renewable materials; and reinforcing carbons made with a demonstrably reduced greenhouse gas footprint from decarbonisation technologies.
The key technical (and commercial) challenge addressed by this project is that “while many innovative solutions have been introduced to industry, offering sustainable content with reliable performance at industrial scale has been difficult.”
To date, Cabot has launched two Evolve products under the recovered category: Vulcan 7H-C circular reinforcing carbon and Sterling SO-RC110 circular reinforcing carbon.
Made from ISCC+ certified tire pyrolysis oil derived from ELTs, Vulcan 7H-C is said to deliver “optimal dispersibility and extrusion characteristics to rubber compounds and drop-in performance comparable to Vulcan 7H carbon black or ASTM N234 carbon black.”
It is suitable for synthetic and natural rubber-based tire treads and industrial rubber products that require excellent wear resistance, such as conveyor belts, solid tires, and other applications that require high abrasion resistance.
Produced by a Cabot co-pelletisation technology, Sterling SO-RC110 is a semi-reinforcing material containing 10% recovered carbon material. It combines ISCC+ certified recovered carbon material with Sterling SO carbon black to deliver performance comparable to ASTM N550 carbon black.
It is said to offer high levels of quality, consistency and processability in rubber compounds used in sidewalls and under-tread compounds in passenger car and light truck tires as well as industrial rubber products.
Going forward, Cabot is developing additional reinforcing carbon technologies recovered from ELT products, which “will offer reliable performance at industrial scale, enabling tire makers to use higher amounts of sustainable content in their tire designs.”
Cabot further commented that Evolve “represents a significant portion of its R&D spend, with the goal that 100% of our product and process development projects will have a sustainability benefit by 2025.”
Cabot since announced that it had enhanced its manufacturing capabilities in North America for circular reinforcing carbons powered by its Evolve Sustainable Solutions technology platform: the group’s site in Ville Platte, Louisiana, USA joining Mauá, Brazil and Valasske Mezirici (Valmez), Czech Republic as manufacturing locations with demonstrated circular reinforcing carbons production capability.
The circular reinforcing carbons are made using tire pyrolysis oil (TPO) derived from end-of-life tires that leverage an ISCC+ mass balance approach.
Cabot said its TPO-based circular reinforcing carbons offer a drop-in replacement for traditional carbon black: enabling manufacturers to boost the sustainable content of their products without compromising performance.
